All the weight of her marriage came tumbling down upon her at once, crushing. Mirabel jerked away from Demon Winter and the temptation he presented, severing the contact although she regretted it.
“I cannot…” She tried to find an explanation that would suffice and failed. “I must go.”
Before the last word fled from her lips, she had already turned to flee.
Chapter 2
“Youdorealize you cannot remain in hiding all day, do you not?”
Mirabel frowned at Octavia over her chocolate cup’s gold-edged rim. The ducal crest was carefully facing out; the less Mirabel saw of it, the better. Unfortunately, she still knew it was there, likely mocking her poor sister. Octavia had never liked Stanhope any more than Mirabel had.
But never mind that. Most people hadn’t been fond of the Duke of Stanhope, with the dubious exception of his mistresses.
“Of course I can remain abed all day,” she told her sister. “I shall feign an ailment and no one will know the difference. It will be just as it was whenever Stanhope was in residence.”
Toward the end of their marriage, before her husband’s death, the duke had been in residence on a sole occasion per year—enough to see his heirs and ignore Joanna, their middle child. Then, he would return to the home he kept for his mistress, where he preferred to stay. Mirabel had been glad for his absence, but she had remained his prisoner just the same. The Duke of Stanhope could bed every lightskirt in town, whilst Mirabel was expected to remain a paragon of virtue.
Or face her husband’s wrath.
The reminder sent a shiver down her spine, but she chased away the memories of those long-ago days, for Stanhope could no longer hurt her now. He could haunt the past all he wished, but there was no place for him in the present, where she and Octavia were comfortably ensconced in the sitting area of Mirabel’s bedchamber.
Unfortunately, by the harsh light of morning, her shame and guilt over her behavior at Lady Fortune the previous evening threatened to overwhelm.
“The children would fret over you, and you know it,” Octavia countered in fond tones.
She was an indulgent aunt. Octavia loved Percy, Joanna, and Gideon as if they were her own. And Octavia was right—Mirabel’s beloved children would wonder at her extended absence. They were the only good which had come of her miserable match with Stanhope.
Well, her children and her newfound freedom, tentative though it was. But the latter had emerged from the end of her marriage instead.
“I expect my darlings would,” she acknowledged. “However, this morning, I needed some privacy in which to hang my head in shame. I feel like a fool. Why did you allow me to believe the owner of Lady Fortune would be able to assist me in my effort to find a…myendeavor?”
She could not bear to utter the wordlovernow. Not when the mere thought of it brought with it more heat than embarrassment. More thoughts ofhim. Demon Winter. Even his name was a sin.
Octavia shrugged, looking blithe. “Because I thought they would. Everyone who has ever seen a print shop caricature knows gaming hells are filled with bawds. Why should one suppose a gaming hell for ladies is any different? Moreover, the anonymity you have there seemed the perfect foil for seeking a lover without inviting scandal, and I know how much care you take with your reputation.”
Mirabel almost choked on her chocolate. “Do you mean to tell me you based your authority in the matter uponcaricatures?”
The scandal-mongering print shops in London were notorious for their scathing depictions of society. She knew Octavia sent servants to obtain them frequently; as the lady of the house, it was impossible not to. However, she had not supposed her sister’s recommendation had been solely based upon the lewd scribblings of caricaturists.
Why had she listened to Octavia? Should she not have known better by now? Her sister was forever getting into scrapes. Her lack of adherence to societal demands was what had rendered her unweddable. At least, according to polite society. And their mother.
Octavia had the grace to look a bit shamefaced. “Pray do not be vexed with me. The caricatures have never been wrong before.”
Mirabel frowned, for she refused to view such nonsense. In the early years of her marriage, she had been featured in them with a frequency that had been most distressing, but Octavia had likely been unable to get her hands upon them then, ruled as she had been by their proper mother. “Surely they have had occasion to be wrong.”
Her sister schooled her features into a look of feigned innocence. “Not once.”
“You are an incorrigible hoyden.” Mirabel said the last without rancor, for it was impossible to be angry with her sister. Octavia was sweet, kind, outspoken, and eccentric, and she was blessed with a generous heart. A combination which promised to see her spirits crushed and her heart broken in any society marriage.
“I am a spinster,” Octavia corrected her. “An incorrigiblespinster, if you please. I shall own my faults, and my age is among them. You are saving me from my fate as a companion to some dreadful dowager and her dogs, and I shall be forever grateful. The least I can do is to help you to find a man to—”
“Enough, my dear,” Mirabel interrupted primly, her cheeks going hot. “If your age is a detriment, I shudder to think what mine is.”
Octavia was nearly ten years her junior. So was Mr. Demon Winter.
And he was devilishly handsome as well.
Too young, she chided herself.Too wrong for the task.If indeed there could be a task. She was woefully inept at the business of being a wicked widow in secret, having never experienced wickedness herself. Stanhope’s visit to her bed had been perfunctory at best and painful at worst.
